Rock

For those who fawn over the soundtrack crafted for the newest iteration of DOOM, composed by Mick Gordon, you might want to take a look at a new indie game with a soundtrack composed to sound quite a bit like the industrial vibe of the DOOM and Prey soundtracks.

Abatron, an action strategy shooter game in early access on Steam that styles itself as “galactic dominance with controlled combat” is very much akin to that of DOOM. The graphics and aesthetics certainly give a hard nod to the sci-fi horror-like imagery and feel of DOOM, though with a bit more of a technological spin to it. Abatron’s music is also a nod to the former, with both an oldschool and new feel to it. The game’s composer, Nils “NeonInsect” Sinatsch, had some very clearcut ideas in mind when he composed the game’s music.

Steel Samurai has been kicking around the Baltimore, Maryland scene since late 2013, making appearances at MAGFest and Bit Gen while contributing their brand of rock to an array of gamemusiccompilations. They specialize in power-rocking “the most ancient, unused and obscure video game compositions” and their second, self-titled EP definitely holds true to that mission statement.

Released on July 29th, Steel Samurai is a short EP but it rocks all the way through and covers a lot of rarely-revisited source material. The theme of the band’s namesake — the fictional TV hero from the also-fictional world of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney — opens things up with a powerful rendition of the traditional Japanese-style tune from the DS game. But track two is what really pulled me into this album.

Here’s a fun little treat to close out your holiday week. Grant “Stemage” Henry of Metroid Metal and Viking Guitar Live renown has decided to take some of the most iconic tunes from the NES library and literally spins them in reverse with RETROGRESSION VOL.1. The resulting reversed tracks prove that the musical library of many NES games, such as Super Mario Bros. and Punch Out! are just as amazing backwards as they are forwards.

Henry proves the legitimacy of his retro reversals by also releasing the tracks themselves reversed into their original compositions in order to hear exactly how on-the-mark he hits with the backwards transcriptions.

You can grab RETROGRESSION VOL.1 (meaning we could see more volumes in the future) at the name-your-price tier on the Stemage Bandcamp site.

Coming off of Patient Corgi’s mega collaboration, Tribute Album 64, Vancouver’s video game medley band, The Runaway Four, have announced the release of their first studio album on January 20th. Titled Chaos Theatre the 45 minute album offers five tracks of themed medleys with tunes from 31 different games mingling and mixing together.

In the opening track “This Game is Baroquen”, you’ll hear Final Fantasy, ActRaiser, Super Mario RPG, Columns and Katamari beautifully intertwined and played in a classical baroque style. The next three medleys are themed around the video game tropes of Ice Worlds, Fire Worlds and Battle Themes.

In “Borreal Bedlam” Earthbound flows into Donkey Kong Country into Kirby’s Dream Course among 8 other themes. On “Magma Mayhem” you’ll hear Diddy Kong Racing mingle into Super Mario RPG and charge into “Hot Damned” from Super Meat Boy. “Battle Royale” is a 17-minute track that melds 15 different battle themes from games including Chrono Cross, Bahamut Lagoon, Kirby Super Star, Pokemon R/B/Y and even Mega Man. Finally, there’s “Your Sanctuary”, a medley of themes from Earthbound which the band describes as “the warm hug at the end of the journey”.

Chaos Theatre will be released January 20th on The Runaway Four’s Bandcamp page and kicked off with a live show and listening party at Seven Dining Lounge in Vancouver. For those not on the continent or in the area they’ll also be streaming the event live on their Twitch channel. In the meantime, check out some of The Runaway Four’s past performances on YouTube and their previous release Live at Columbia Theatre on Bandcamp.

The OneUps have just released their seventh studio album, appropriately titled “Part Seven”. The OneUps are a video game music cover band that performs arrangements of a wide variety of music, oftentimes in variations of jazz and rock styles. Their latest album, released just prior to this past MAGFest last month, continues this trend with new covers in a funk rock style. It includes a nice selection of songs, including some fairly familiar ones and some less so. Read on for the full review.

There’s been a lot of excitement about the remake of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII. I myself am cautiously optimistic about the game, but I’m still quite excited. To help celebrate the announcement of the long requested remake, I thought we’d take a look at a Final Fantasy VII cover for this week’s Arrangement of the Week.

There are of course tons of covers, remixes, and arrangements of Nobuo Uematsu’s original soundtrack. With so much to choose from, it was definitely hard to pick out a favorite. This week’s arrangement is called “Still More Fighting” and comes to us from guitarist Brian Autumn. The cover is of the Final Fantasy VII boss fight theme, “Fight On!” aka “Those Who Fight Further.”

The video does a great job of showing off Brian’s skills at electric guitar and bass, and features footage from one of Final Fantasy VII’s boss fights. Oddly enough, it’s not a boss that actually uses “Fight On!” for its battle music. While it’s very common to find rock guitar arrangements of this piece, this arrangement goes beyond being a pure guitar cover, with inclusion of organ, synths, and string pads. It all fits well with the style of the original piece and with the original game footage. Uematsu’s battle themes do have a strong rock influence, particularly in Final Fantasy VII, so this cover stays very true to the original in terms of tone.

The source material is broken up by occasional but brief deviations and improvisations. For example, at around 1’30” he launches into an impressive series of rapid arpeggios on the lead guitar. My favorite moment though is the sudden switch to an orchestral arrangement at 2’30” for the summon in the battle. It’s a cool switch up that, in addition to matching the battle on screen, gives the cover a little more variety.

This was a nice little find from Brian Autumn. This actually appears to be his only videogame music cover, and an excellent one at that. If you’d like to listen to or download a copy of “Still More Fighting” that doesn’t include the video’s battle sound effects, you can do so at the artist’s Soundcloud page.

Have you heard any interesting new arrangements, remixes, or covers this week? Let us know in the comments below.

Prepare to press Z or R twice for this next group performing at MAGFest 13. Do A Barrel Roll! is a group of seven self described warrior-musicians. Their music style is a playful mixture of funk, metal, and acoustic arrangements of game tunes, and they will often blend these genres on a single track or make surprising switches midway through any given piece. For example, the track “Can’t Let You Groove That, Star Funk!,” off their latest album Boss Rush, features a blend of rock and synth instruments, but also includes trumpet, violin, and acoustic guitar solos. The result is a unique sound to their arrangements that makes them easily distinguishable from other game music cover bands.

Many of the pieces that Do A Barrel Roll! arrange come from well known game series like Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, and of course Star Fox. They also perform a handful of less frequently covered tunes from games like Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart. Do A Barrel Roll! also likes to incorporate sound samples from the games that they are covering, adding some extra nostalgic flavor to the arrangements. One of their performance trademarks for live events has included inviting members of the audience to play games while they perform on stage. There’s nothing quite like playing a round of Mario Kart while a live band plays the music.

Do A Barrel Roll’s approach to performing and their eclectic blending of music genres gives the group a sound and style all their own. Definitely check out their albums on Bandcamp, if you haven’t already. This year they will be performing as part of the supporting bands line-up at MAGFest 13 on Sunday at 3:30 on the main stage. Be sure to check them out and the other bands’ performing times on the MAGFest 13 Schedule.

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